The Diocese of San Joaquin and its Bishop, John-David Schofield, will not participate in any ecclesiastical disciplinary action brought against them by The Episcopal Church, according to statements released by the diocese and Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables, Primate of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone.
Nice turn of the phrase “will not participate.” I have visons of the bishop opening an engraved invitation from 815 . . . “You are cordially invited to attend your own inhibition. RSVP.”
“So sorry, madame PB, I have a previous engagement on that date. Do give Chancellor Beers my best.”
I was sort of wishing that Bp Schofield would participate, with the stipulation that the proceedings would be public in contrast to the closed door hatchet job they apparently pulled on good and godly Bp Steenson. It could have been a good opportunity for Christian witness to Katherine Jefferts Schori.
This is identical in process with the withdrawals/inhibitions of priests who follow/lead their parishes to foreign oversight. The ante, however, has been considerably upped. By this model, lawsuits are next.
If the Virginia case is working on its $third and $fourth $million (by DioVA & ADV cumulatively), how much will [i]this[/i] case enrich the lawyers and impoverish the Christians? This case cries out for mediation and an out-of-court settlement. Alas, that is not possible until the lawsuits have first been filed.
Tom Roberts has an excellent nutshell summary of what must happen next, posted to a comment thread [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/9183/#170467]over here[/url].
This is what happens when you ignore, dodge, fail to decide, discipline, etc. It was called APO. Now it just is. And it will go on and on and on. Time for Canterbury to make the hard calls, including intervention in the lawsuits, instructing the courts on the nature of our Communion polity, and to lend concrete aid to those who are being persecuted by failure of the Communion to act as it if fact speaks.
Albany, I’m not holding my breath.
No surprise here.
Witnessing to KJS is like dealing with a horse wearing blinders: It can’t see anywhere but straight ahead, and can’t be distracted with them on. In KJS’ case, she can’t be distracted by the truth.
As available funds in more and more dioceses dry up as giving continues downward, I’d hope even the revisionist bishops start telling 815, “Sue them if you want but we can’t afford to join you in any of it.” At some point 815 is going to have to throw in the towel. Then watch the exodus explode!!!!
Something rings true about what is about to happen in TEC. Jesus said to the wayward church in Revelation: “I will vomit you out.” Hardly a peace-making gesture on the Lord’s part. KJS must be grieved that The Christ didn’t read her playbook.
Is (was) there a way for TEC to declare the TEC Bishop of San Joaquin position vacant with out inhibiting him?
This makes the decision by Rowan Williams re:Lambeth invite to JDS all the more interesting.
If Rowan maintains the invitation, he is pointedly declaring that he does not recognize TEC’s deposition of JDS and that he recognizes the Province of the Southern Cone’s legitimate jurisdiction over the Diocese of San Joaquin. Think it through, there is no other way that a continuing invitation to JDS can be interpreted.
If Rowan rescinds the invitation, he is pointedly declaring that his letter to John Howe and his Advent Letter, were both packs of lies, and will serve as notice to orthodox bishops and dioceses in TEC, that Rowan is deceptive and manipulative.
Like Robroy, I think that the safest guess about Rowan is that he will do nothing, and so I expect that JDS will maintain his Lambeth invite. I hope the lawyers will be paying attention.
Neutrality is interesting, is it not? Even inaction can work against you.
I imagine that the archbishop isn’t going to make an ultimatum that he knows will get thrown back in his face. And it’s really hard for anathemas and excommunications to have any serious gravity in a more congregationalist mindset. Do you really want a Canterbury Papacy? No, don’t expect a show of force from Dr. Williams.
For the meanwhile, nothing decisive will be said, no firm positions taken. In some minds, a quiet de facto rupture in the communion is easier to accept than a flaming public split.
Jimbob: As Kendall Harmon said in his talks to the Colorado folk, not to decide just means that the decisions will be made for you. Rowan Williams has studiously avoided making decisions up till now, and he can still try to avoid making one, but he cannot avoid the consequences of his non-decision. The consequences now are just much more noticeable.
All I’m envisioning is the picture of the inhibited bishop with Madonna singing, “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” in the background.
Who is surprised by the inhibition? No one.
Who is surprised that Schofield is going to ignore it? No one.
So why are commenters on threads pertaining to these issues acting surprised?
#11, don’t you think he could keep the invite but refuse comment on the legitimacy of the diocese under Venables? To me that would be classic +++RW.
Chris: No. To invite Schofield is to recognize him as a legitimate diocesan bishop of the Anglican Communion. The Diocese of San Joaquin is his diocese. If Rowan invites him, it is, ipso facto, a recognition that Schofield is the legitimate bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin.
re 13: I don’t think RW didn’t make any decisions; he rather obviously decided to make everyone work this out at Lambeth. Meanwhile the radical reasserters are creating facts on the ground (with help from 815) which are making it increasingly likely that by the time Lambeth rolls around, the divisions will be all but permanent and “worked out” with the maximum destruction and enmity all around.
It doesn’t seem to me that San Joaquin had to pull out right now. And while she is being true to her statements, I don’t think that KJS really had to resort to inhibition right off the bat. But now we’ve advanced to the point where nobody can back down without a major loss of face, which would be utterly miraculous were such humility to break forth.
And of course, it’s hard to see how Cantuar can invite Schofield without having to go back and invite all the Dubious Bishops. So now we have another pretext for pride, in the form of “You let them bring their bishops, but not ours!” Honestly, it sounds like my children. The thing that really irks me is that the reasserters had the opportunity to go to Lambeth, prevail in the discussion, and thus win all the moderates to the fold. Instead, in a fit of hardly-mitigated self-righteousness, they’re going to hand the middle to the radical liberal camp.
“The thing that really irks me is that the reasserters had the opportunity to go to Lambeth, prevail in the discussion, and thus win all the moderates to the fold.”
This already happened, in 1998. I can well understand the reluctance of “reasserting” bishops to find themselves involved in a farcical ecclesiastical version of the film “Groundhog Day,” in which their “prevailing” at Lambeth 2008 would result in further prevarication and inaction by the Archb. of Cant., with eventual assurance that it would all be worked out at Lambeth 2018, and so on ad infinitum. They were wise to spurn the poisoned chalice, and so I expect to be an interested observer of the forthcoming crack-up of the Anglican Communion, and the further splits as “Catholic Anglicans” and “Evangelical Anglicans” discover it impossible to cohabit in their New Improved Anglican Communion (or Federation).
C. Wingate: The fact is that Bishop Schofield has already been invited……as a TEC bishop. Rowan Cantuar is very much aware of +John-David’s reputation as a faithful man of God, and for him to disinvite him because he and our diocese left TEC for the Southern Cone……where he is now a member of their House of Bishops, by the way…….would be a gaffe of huge proportions, which would serve to offend not only the Southern Cone, but many other primates as well.
Agree with Dr. Tighe. Lambeth will do nothing, in part because the ABC wants nothing to be done. Only endless process, without decision, preserves the AC. On the other hand Rome has its own errors, and I can’t go there, but I admit, Marian idiolitry, pails in comparison to Protestant denials of Christ.
The phrase “poisoned chalice” would tend to imply a malice on Cantuar’s part which I think is without cause. And I wasn’t there, of course, but accounts of the last Lambeth do not lead me to believe that “it already happened”. The bishops made some pronouncements, but did not act upon them; nor IIRC did Carey lay out such an agenda. The Chapman memo, if one is to take it as significant (and some of us are beginning to suspect that the reappraiser allegations about that were true), didn’t come out until late in 2003. In retropect the whole notion of an communion division was planted at that Lambeth; the Righter court gave its judgement but two years before.
In any case, given that this has been building for anywhere from four to maybe over a decade, I do not see the gain of this precipitous rush to action. About the only “gain” I see would be to some other established non-Anglican churches (say, the Lutherans and Catholics and Orthodox and Methodists) who pick up some of the survivors of the shipwreck. Oh, and the devil of course, who may well come to collect the many unchurched who will surely be turned away from religion in the course of the destruction. Going to Lambeth grants obvious legitimacy; if they go, and the attempt to deal with the crisis fails or is pitiful, then they can readily say, “well, if we can’t deal with it that way, then we will have to abandon the communion as it stands.” And everyone will see that this is so. But if they tear ECUSA apart bishop by bishop, it’s hard to see how Lambeth is going to do anything other than wed ECUSA to the C of E and any other Anglican church which hasn’t already stomped off. It seems to me that Williams wants to discipline ECUSA; but he needs the rest of the communion to do it effectively.
It’s obvious that you and I have different views about what hope there is for this succeeding. But I think there is a reason for going through that much of the motions, and no further.
[blockquote] ……where he is now a member of their House of Bishops, by the way…….[/blockquote]
According to whom, [b]Cennyd?[/b]
[i] Edited by elf. [/i]
The amazing disappearing Episcopal bishop of the diocese of San Joaquin. Y’all must head over to Baby Blue’s and [url=http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2008/01/guess-whos-been-disappeared.html ]check this out[/url].
“Bishop Schofield Will Ignore Inhibition”
“Aslan Will Ignore Fleas”
According to Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of the Americas, Smuggs……that’s whom!
If the elf hadn’t edited my post, Cennyd, you would have known why I believe that he doesn’t matter. Once JDS is deposed, I believe that Rowan will no longer invite him just as he has not invited any person who has set up office in the United States and claims to be a bishop affiliated with Uganda, Rwanda, or Nigeria. And since it’s still Rowan who invites and disinvites, Gregory does not matter.
i think they should be left alone, i mean if they arent being trued is because not enough information has been found to prosecute them and sentence them into a jury